This paper aims at investigating racial insults as a means of building a stigmatized social identity. With that in mind the author uses complaints filed with the São Paulo Racial Crime Police Headquarters as a source for analyzing stereotypes that are socially accepted by both victims and police officers. The author argues that the function of racial insults is to instate people as racially inferior, and that such attacks can not only symbolically direct those who are discriminated against toward their historically constituted status as inferiors but also reinstate that status.
